Birth story: A head-down honeymoon baby

Billy and I met in February 2006 and have been inseparable ever since. From the very first moment, we both knew that this was meant to be and have been loving life ever since. We became engaged on November 17, 2006, and eloped on February 22, 2007, our one-year anniversary. We live in Maryland.

How it all began

Our little Naomae was a surprise, but it seems that she was entwined with us from the beginning. We eloped to Florida for two weeks -- that's where we got married and honeymooned. During the second week, while we were visiting Mickey Mouse, I started not feeling right. Sometimes I'd feel sick in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. I don't have the best history with travel so I really wasn't surprised, just bummed that I was feeling so bad on our honeymoon. My husband told me later he started to get an inkling of what it really was but didn't mention anything.

Our trip ended, and we flew home. I was getting ready to go back to work on the Monday after our trip and expected my period to show up that day as well. Monday came and went with nothing and so did the rest of the week.

It was a stressful time with work and my family. Maybe I'm just late, I thought. But Billy suggested we buy a pregnancy test. I thought he was a little crazy -- it didn't happen just like that, did it?

I felt so nervous thinking about what this test could mean. The first one I took came up a half hour later with half a line. I wasn't sure what was going on. We waited a few days and bought another test. This time I didn't have to wait two minutes, not even two seconds: A plus sign showed up right away. All I could do was smile, all my husband could do was be giddy: We were going to have a baby!

For the next few weeks, I referred to the baby as our little souvenir, our honeymoon baby. I spent the next nine months being excited, nervous, and scared out of my mind. In my heart, I knew that this was what was next for us, and I needed to do whatever I could to make sure I kept our little jelly bean safe and healthy.

Everything came together when I found out my due date was November 16 -- almost exactly a year after we got engaged. How could it not be meant to be? We had created our own circle of love.

I spent the first several months just bursting to find out whether it was a boy or a girl: our little monkey or our little cupcake? I was 20 weeks exactly on my birthday and got to schedule my 20-week ultrasound on that day -- it was the best present. It was at that moment that I became a mom.

We had had an early ultrasound at six weeks to confirm the pregnancy, and we'd seen the heartbeat. It was amazing to see how much the baby had grown in 14 weeks. I will never forget that ultrasound. She was already showing off such a personality!

Our little one was planted face-down and wouldn't move, so we had to come back to get heart and face measurements. The baby did show us what was between those legs, though, and there she was: a girl! Our Baby Cupcake she was. We decided to keep her name a secret until birth, so everyone knew her as Baby Cupcake for those last months.

It was in the middle of September when Cupcake started making life interesting. As a pre-kindergarten teacher, I couldn't really take it easy, and I started going into preterm labor. Over the next four weeks, we made four trips to the hospital, plus I began nonstress tests and biophysical profiles once a week -- which Cupcake began to fail. So I went on bedrest in October. Things improved, the contractions stopped.

We weren't in the clear yet, though: Cupcake had spent most of the pregnancy in the breech/transverse position. (Her head was always a little too high to be labeled just transverse.) So I was posed with the question of whether to try to turn her or go for a c-section.

I was about to schedule a version to turn her, but at 36 weeks she was head-down and ready to go. But our little one kept us on our toes: The next week, we found her in a frank breech position. She just kept turning somersaults! So we scheduled a c-section for November 8 and also moved my induction date up to then.

We planned one more sonogram before the c-section to check Cupcake's position. Depending on where she was, the doctor would either induce or go in and get her. So the big question was, what was Cupcake going to do?

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